"Jennette McCurdy was six years old when she had her first acting audition. Her mother's dream was for her only daughter to become a star, and Jennette would do anything to make her mother happy. So she went along with what Mom called "calorie restriction," eating little and weighing herself five times a day. She endured extensive at-home makeovers while Mom chided, "Your eyelashes are invisible, okay? You think Dakota Fanning doesn't tint hers?"...

"Eight or so decades ago, Eileen Webster was working a math problem on the blackboard of her Dayton, Ohio, classroom when an eraser bounced off a few feet to one side of her. The eraser had been launched by a classmate, Jim Dicke, who with characteristic directness had decided this would be a good way to gain the attention of the young woman standing at the front of a class. I was a hit or miss proposition so to speak, but it succeeded. Willeen and...

"The time for do-overs is over. Ever since she became a parent, Mary Louise Kelly has said 'next year.' Next year will be the year she makes it to her son James's soccer games (which are on weekdays at 4 p.m., right when she is on the air on NPR's All Things Considered, talking to millions of listeners). Drive carpool for her son Alexander? Not if she wants to do that story about Ukraine and interview the secretary of state. Like millions of parents...

"One morning, Tophs, Taylor Harris's round-cheeked, lively twenty-two-month-old, wakes up listless and unresponsive. At the hospital, her maternal instincts are confirmed: something is wrong with her boy, and Taylor's life will never be the same. With every question the doctors answer about Tophs's increasingly troubling symptoms, more arise, and Taylor dives into the search for a diagnosis. This is a stirring and radiantly written examination of...

"All those years you tried your best to break me, and I'm still here. One day you'll see, I'm going to make something of myself." These words were Dave Pelzer's declaration of independence to his mother, and they represented the ultimate act of self-reliance. Dave's father never intervened as his mother abused him with shocking brutality. But even after he was rescued, his life remained haunted by memories of his years as the bruised, cowering "It"...

Invites mothers to rediscover the joys of everyday family life and the challenges of letting go of grown children, in a personal account that describes the author's older son's departure for college and her memories of shared times in their small New England community.

A gripping expose told with novelistic intrigue, "Philomena" pulls back the curtain on the role of the Catholic Church in forced adoptions, and on the love between a mother and son that endured a lifelong separation.

The story of how one little boy found the courage to survive years of physical abuse-- and how the human spirit can triumph over even the most severe of circumstances. The Pelzer family's secret life of fear and abuse was first revealed in Dave Pelzer's inspiring New York Times bestseller, A Child Called "It," followed by The Lost Child and A Man Called Dave. Here, for the first time, Richard Pelzer tells the courageous and moving story of his abusive...

After a mistake at her infertility clinic, Carolyn Savage learned she was carrying another couple's baby. In this memoir, she and her husband explain why they decided to go through with the pregnancy and deliver a healthy boy to the biological parents.

"In this unputdownable story of nature, nurture, and coming to terms with one's true inheritance, the author, introducing her deeply dysfunctional yet fiercely loving family that is anything but "normal," reveals how a colorful cast of characters were thrown together by chance and DNA."--